Has anyone else seen that Nike is going to make Marty McFly shoes!  That got me daydreaming about going on a day trip in a Delorean.

Let’s take it all the way back to the late 1400s and early 1500s.  If you were like most people at the time you would think that the sun is bright and worth focusing on, but the earth is the center of our galaxy.  Then, one day Copernicus came along and theorized that actually the sun is the center of our galaxy, not the other way around.  Talk about blowing minds and shattering paradigms…

Now, let’s come back to the present.  What is your life centered on?  What are things that you focus on in life?  For me, my life centers on and revolves around my family.  Everything I do I do for them.  Now I focus on a few things, being a great partner at work, writing poems, performing slam, etc., but everything I do always connects back to my family.  Do you see the difference between centered and focused?

I bring this up, because one day a colleague pointed out to me that we use the phrases “customer centric” and “customer focused” like they were interchangeable, but they aren’t.   Being customer focused means that we are only this way when we are really thinking about it.  On the other hand, being customer centered means that everything we are doing, big or small, revolves around helping customers.  If the customer is the sun in our solar system, then that light and gravity should be dictating everything that we do.

Are you customer centered, patient focused, or neither?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry